By 5 p.m. today, the fishing vessel Ile de Reunion is expected to rendezvous in the southern Indian Ocean with 16-year-old Abby Sunderland and her crippled sailboat, ending the Californian's bid to circumnavigate the globe alone.
The rescue effort that began just before 9 a.m. Thursday, when Sunderland triggered two emergency satellite beacons, would have been impossible without a global system of satellites and electronics, including a computer center in Suitland.
Sunderland left Cape Town, South Africa, on May 21. But in satellite telephone conversations with her family at 7 a.m. Thursday she reported her boat was being pounded by 30-foot waves.
Less than two hours later, at 8:50 a.m., an Indian weather satellite picked up a signal from her boat's Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, known as EPIRB. Rescuers learned later that waves had toppled the boat's mast and its satellite phone antenna.
Sunderland's boat carried two EPIRBs, but "she fired off one that can only be manually activated," said Lt. Shawn Maddock, at the NOAA Search and Rescue Satellite control center in Suitland. "We knew at least she had the presence of mind and physical capability of actuating that EPIRB."
The second EPIRB would be triggered if the boat had sunk. But it remained silent. Also good news. At 8:54 a.m., the Indian search-and-rescue operations center in Bangalore received a signal traced to the personal locator beacon (PLB) Sunderland carried on her belt.
Daniel R. Ch'en gave her the device. He is president of Microwave Monolithics Inc., the Simi Valley, Calif., company that makes the device, and also a neighbor and friend of her family.
No bigger than a pack of cigarettes, the $698 MicroPLB Type GXL was developed under a NASA contract in 1987 to build a hand-held beacon with the power to reach weather satellites 22,500 miles in space.
"She [Abby] promised her mother, in my presence, that she would carry the MicroPLB on her belt 24/7," Ch'en said. To set it off, she had to pull off a cap to release the 10-inch antenna, and yank on a 2-inch lanyard.
Although both beacons were designed to transmit GPS position data, for some reason the information wasn't immediately sent, Ch'en said.
Instead, Sunderland's 15-character identification number was relayed from India to the U.S. Mission Control Center in Suitland. At 8:58 a.m. — eight minutes after Sunderland triggered her beacon — the data was relayed automatically from Suitland to the U.S. Coast Guard's Pacific Area command in Alameda, Calif. Officials there alerted her parents by telephone.
By 9:26 a.m., two weather satellites in low orbit had flown over Sunderland's boat, and the Suitland computers were finally able to pinpoint her location.
"She's in the middle of nowhere," said David Affens, NASA Search and Rescue Mission manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. "Somewhere 2,000 miles west of Perth [Australia] and 1,500 miles from Reunion Island," a French possession off Madagascar. "You'd be hard-pressed to be farther from actual help."
Even so, Suitland computers alerted French authorities, who diverted the Ile de Reunion and two other vessels toward Sunderland's position.
Within hours, however, Sunderland's boat had drifted east from the French to the Australian rescue zone. The Australians sent a Quantas Airlines Airbus 330 — the only aircraft with the necessary range — to locate her. Spotters at the windows found her and spoke with her by short-range marine radio. She was safe and warm on her crippled boat, they said, awaiting rescue.
Ch'en said he plans to give her a gold-plated PLB when she returns.
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